1. New
York in 1857 was "a huge
semi-barbarous metropolis...not
well-governed nor ill-governed,
but simply not governed at
all-with filthy and unlighted
streets, no practical or
efficient security for either
life or property, a police not
worthy of the name, and expenses
steadily and enormously
increasing." (Harper's Weekly,
April 11, 1857.)

In other words it was
the most thriving commercial
city, the busiest port, in a
great, gangling country which
was growing up fast. Its
population increased by 300,000
in ten years. It was the sieve
through which the bulk of
European commodities and human
beings passed into the fabulous
new continent; and linked by
railroads and waterways with the
West, it served as broker for
the products of the plains.

2. To the port of New
York came most of the immigrants
who flocked to America at the
average rate of 235,000 a year
during the fifties. About half
the city's population in 1860
was foreign-born, 200,000
immigrants from Ireland made it
the largest Irish city in the
world. More than 2,000 Italians
were congested in one squalid
section, whence itinerant
peddlers sallied into the
provinces, and where the less
venturesome sold fruit and
confections. The city's share of
the nation's 150,000 Jews
centered in the districts about
Chatham Street and the Bowery,
occupied chiefly with the
clothing business. Some of the
million and a quarter German
immigrants
settled, as they did in
Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago,
Milwaukee and Louisville, in a
part of the city where they
maintained the social
institutions of the Fatherland
at the same time that they
embraced American customs and
interests. Few of the Polish,
French, Scandinavian, And
English immigrants stayed in the
great Atlantic ports, most of
them moving on to the West.

3. By 1860 there were
more than ten thousand tenement
houses in New York. About a
twentieth of the population of
Boston and New York lived
underground in damp, dark rooms
among filth and vermin. When, in
1860, New York provided for a
system of sanitary police to
improve these conditions, the
slum owners applied to Tammany
for appointments as health
inspectors and got
them. The death rate in the city
almost doubled that of London.

The tenements were firetraps.
Ten people were killed at No. 90
West 45th street. Martin Redman
and his family, who lived in one
room behind the "Fancy Grocery"
and liquor store which they ran,
escaped unhurt; but the wives
and children of Thomas Bennett
and Andrew Wheelan, both of whom
were employed in the Sixth
Avenue Railroad Company's
stables, were burned to ashes.

4. May Day in New York
was moving-day, as it had been
since the days of the Dutch. The
custom originally sprang from a
city ordinance which required
anyone who was going to move to
do it by May 1st, in order that
the city directory could be made
up on schedule.

During the 'fifties it became so
fashionable to move that some
fine ladies were ashamed to have
it known that they were
remaining another year in the
old house. We should probably
think that the house servants,
upon whom most of the labor of
moving devolved, earned a full
month's wages on May Day,
inasmuch as their salaries
ranged from as low as four
dollars a month for a
maid-of-all-work, to a top of
sixteen dollars a month for the
best cook.

5. A favorite place
for the young ladies of New York
to take their parents was
Cozzens Hotel at West Point,
where during the summer months,
the cadets at the Military
Academy gave a "hop" three times
a week.

6. When Central Park
in New York was opened in 1860,
the Weekly hailed it as a
"sylvan miracle, teeming with
bowers of romantic loveliness
and dripping fountains of
clearest crystal." With the
coming of cold weather the ponds
of the new park were packed with
crowds of ten thousand skaters
or more.

7. The first
convention of baseball clubs was
held in New York in 1857.
Delegates from sixteen
organizations met to establish
uniform rules for the game. But
even in 1859, when Brooklyn
played Philadelphia at the
Elysian Fields in Hoboken, the
Weekly could only report vaguely
that "Baseball differs from
cricket, especially, in there
being no wickets. The bat is
held high in the air. When the
ball has been struck the 'outs'
try to catch it, in which case
the striker is 'out'; or, if
they cannot do this, to strike
the striker with it when he is
running, which likewise puts him
out. Instead of wickets, there
are at this game four or five
marks called bases...."

8. The American
theater was actively patronized.
Despite the financial panic of
1857, the manager of the New
York Opera announced that the
season of 1857-58 was the best
ever. Stage versions of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," "Ten Nights in a
Barroom," and Rip Van Winkle"
were ubiquitous. The ballet
aroused enough interest for the
Weekly to present his "perfectly
reliable" likeness of Emma Livry,
a sixteen-year-old French girl,
who had Paris at her feet.

1861-1865

1. There was cheering
from thousands of throats as the
Seventh Regiment of the New York
National Guard marched down
Broadway beneath waving flags.
Amid the shouting and the
blowing of trumpets could be
faintly heard the snapping of
the American Peace Society's
backbone as it protested that it
did not "lend the slightest
countenance to rebellion."

2. The West Point Foundry
at Cold Spring, New York, gave
up such peaceful manufacturing
as machinery for the Jersey City
waterworks, and turned to the
production of twenty-five guns
and seven thousand projectiles a
week.

3. stocks in general rose
an average of forty per cent in
1862. Brokers set up, shops by
the hundreds. The stock of one
coal company rose from ten
dollars a share before the war
to two hundred dollars in 1864
and in a single year paid
dividends amounting to
two-thirds of its capital. The
frenzy was so great that the New
York Stock Exchange did not
offer sufficient scope to
speculators, and in 1862 a man
named Gallagher opened a night
exchange in the basement of the
Fifth Avenue Hotel. So
prosperous was this
stock-gambling venture that in
1865 a separate building was
erected to house it. Then, a few
months later when the Ketchum
scandal broke, the regular Stock
Exchange voted unanimously to
suspend any member who attended
Gallagher's, and the
Weekly rejoiced at the death of
the pestilent institution which
"led directly to so many
defalcations, frauds, failures,
forgeries, and other rascalities."

4. The draft riots in New
York in July, 1863, were a
formidable symptom of industrial
unrest. Congress had recently
passed a Conscription Act to
swell the army's ranks, and when
the first drawing was made on
July 11th a number of
Irish-American longshoremen were
drafted. All might have gone
peacefully but for the fact that
these longshoremen had struck
for higher wages, and their
places had been taken by negro
strike-breakers. Naturally
unwilling to fight for the
freedom of a race whose members
had taken their jobs, they were
in dangerous mood. A mob
attacked the conscription
office, and violence spread.
Soon a gin-soaked mob was
burning buildings, hanging
negroes from lamp-posts,
shooting and beating people to
death, and looting stores.
Police and militia were
powerless. Nearly a thousand
people were killed, and the
damage to property was counted
in millions of dollars.

5. But business still
flourished, in spite of such
disorders. The government was
handing out contracts for
uniforms, guns, food, and ships.
At W.H. Webb's famous New York
shipyard men were at work on
naval vessels, and naval
contracts were as prosperous as
others. A captured
blockade-runner, for instance,
was sold at auction by the
government for $12,000 per
month. To be sure, thousands of
lives were being lost in this
war, but thousands of dollars
were dropping into patriotic
pockets.

1866-1880s

1. Commodore Vanderbilt's
New York Central System was
going so well by 1871 that it
joined with the New Haven road
to build the Grand Central Depot
at 42nd Street and 4th (now
Park) Avenue. It was a monument
to Vanderbilt's genius for
business organization and a
symbol of the wealth which
scoundrels like Jay Gould and
Daniel Drew used to bribe the
legislatures and build their
rail
empires.

2. Rapid transit was a
necessity in the expanding city,
and on July 3, 1868, the first
elevated railroad train sped
along at fifteen m.p.h. from New
York's Battery up Greenwich
Street to Cortlandt. Within a
few years two elevated lines
were under construction on
either side of the city.

3. As early as 1869 work
was begun on a subway in New
York, and by 1870 there was an
underground tube from Warren to
Murray Street, through which a
cylindrical car was alternately
blown and sucked by a
stead-powered blower. For two
years adventurous citizens took
demonstration rides for
twenty-five cents, but the
inventor failed to get a
franchise and the idea of a
subway was
abandoned until the twentieth
century.

4. This
two-million-dollar marble palace
was built in 1869 for A.T.
Stewart, the great New York
merchant, whose retail store had
been patronized by Mrs. Lincoln
and whose wholesale
establishment was unrivaled in
the land. Twelve years earlier
Dr. Townsend's mansion had
attracted gaping visitors to
this same plot on Fifth Avenue.
"New York is a series of
experiments," commented the
Weekly, "and everything which
has lived its life and played
its part is held to be dead, and
is buried, and over it grows a
new world." But Stewart's house,
"if not swallowed up by an
earthquake, will stand as long
as the city remains." There is a
great bank
building on the corner now, and
across the street is the Empire
State building. Even Stewart's
palace played its part and was
buried, though there was no
earthquake.

5. A tenement in Mulberry
Street was home to eighty
people, half of whom were
children. Saturated with filth
and vermin, strewn with garbage
and waste, it was typical of the
plague spots which bred typhus,
smallpox, and diphtheria in
American cities. In 1871
smallpox alone killed more than
eight hundred New Yorkers and
almost two thousand
Philadelphians. As a result of
these horrible conditions,
health departments were created
in numerous municipalities.
Sewage disposal was improved,
streets were at least partially
cleaned, and tenement houses
were supervised.

6. The center of
financial speculation was Wall
Street, home of many of the
nation's largest banks. The
inflation of the currency
following the war, the
consequent inflation of credit,
and the contemporaneous economic
dislocations in Europe and South
America combined to place the
financial system in a perilous
position. The nefarious schemes
of men like Gould and his mates
accentuated the peril.
Immediately after the Erie
re-organization, Gould and Fisk
organized a corner on the gold
market. With the aid of
President Grant's brother-in law
they persuaded the President to
hold back the Treasury's supply
of gold while they bought all
the available metal on the
market. The price soared as the
corner approached completion.,
Then on Black Friday, September
24, 1869, Grant permitted the
Treasury to sell gold, and the
market crashed. Half of Wall
Street was ruined. Fisk lost
everything. Gould alone had
profited because he got word of
the Treasury's plan in time to
unload his holdings on Fisk and
other unsuspecting friends,
while
pretending to buy more himself.

7. Still figuring
prominently among New York's
foreign population were the
Cuban insurrectionists. Their
junta held excited meetings in
these headquarters at the corner
of Rector Street and Broadway.
Here propaganda against Spanish
rule was supplied for American
consumption. Ammunition and arms
were collected, money was
raised, plans for revolutions
were laid. Several expeditions
were sent out to the island in
hopes that the United States
would lend their support, but
the nation was not yet ready for
empire. That would come later.

8. The process of
consolidation and centralization
which rearranged American
business during the period
placed Wall Street squarely at
the apex of the commercial
structure. The Stock Exchange
throve, accordingly. A new
building had been built in 1865,
but by 1880 it had to be greatly
enlarged. In 1865 there were
four hundred members, and a seat
cost $3,000; in 1881 there were
three times as many members and
the price of seats had risen to
$34,000.

9. Panic swept Wall
Street early in May, 1884. The
Marine National Bank closed its
doors on the 7th and people
learned with astonishment that
the failure had resulted from
heavy overdrafts by the firm of
Grant and Ward.

Grant was the first ex-President
who had become a member of the
Wall Street clan, and his name
had lent dignity to the firm.
Ulysses, Junior, was also a
partner. But the active member
was a young scoundrel named
Ferdinand Ward, who used the
Grant reputation to borrow huge
sums for financing non-existent
"government contracts." The
president of the Marine Bank
became an
accomplice. Fraudulent
account-books convinced the
Grants that they were growing
rich. On May 1st the General
thought he was worth two and a
half million. When the crash
came the Grants found that they
had personal assets of about
$180, that the firm owed more
than sixteen million. The
General was old. Ahead there
were poverty, disgrace, and
disillusioned despair.

10. Most notorious sink
of New York's iniquity in the
'eighties was this tumble-down
tenement on the north side of
Thirty-ninth Street between
Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Known
as Hell's Kitchen, it has since
given its name to the entire
district. In 1881 it was owned
by Thomas and Catherine Wilson,
both of whom were in Sing Sing
at the time for engaging in
highway robbery. The resident
hero was Bully Morrison. Drunk
or sober, he could lick anybody,
and frequently did. Among the
other tenants was John Mooney,
who, when taken to jail (for
beating his drunken wife for a
night and a day till she died)
found eight of his fellow
tenants already behind the bars
on assorted charges. Two hundred
and eighty-seven criminal
indictments were drawn against
dwellers in Hell's
Kitchen in two years.

11. The Brooklyn Bridge,
designed and built by the
Roeblings, was not only one of
the greatest engineering
achievements of the time, but an
artistic triumph as well. It
made no attempt to disguise
itself behind Gothic ornament.
It simply spanned the river with
the curving glory of its cables
and steel, unequivocally a
bridge.

Website:

The
History Box.com

Article Name:

New York City Highlights
1850s- 1880s

Researcher/Transcriber

Miriam Medina

Source:

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
From my collection of books:
Adventures of America
1857-1900 A Pictorial Record
From Harper's Weekly by John
A. Kouwenhoven; Harper &
Brothers Publishers-New York
(1938)